Arts and humanities PhD graduates from the US are more employable than their UK counterparts, a conference on doctoral education has heard.The extra length of the US doctoral education – on average seven years compared with four in the UK – creates graduates with significantly more experience in teaching and administration, said Dina Iordanova, professor of film studies at the University of St Andrews.“Those coming out of UK programmes often have little experience in teaching and next to no experience in administration,” Professor Iordanova told the UK Council for Graduate Education’s International Conference on Development in Doctoral Education and Training on 12 April, where she was speaking in a personal capacity.Both factors contribute to university employers not being certain of applicants’ command of the field at large, she said....

Eunice Williams is the pseudonym of a Ph.D. candidate in history at a Southern university. She is working as a writing fellow while she searches for her first tenure-track job or a postdoctoral appointment. Her first three columns in this series were "In Which the Academic Market Looms," "Going Rogue," and "In the Thick of It."The academic job market is an exercise in captivity, and I am still its prisoner.To some extent I've ensured my place in this life by acceding to the terms of academe. I've defended my dissertation, and so I've unofficially transformed myself from Eunice Williams, Ph.D. candidate, to Dr. Williams. Even if I'm befuddled by the job market, I've still agreed to abide by the rules of the game.The problem, I think, is that I'm still not sure that I've learned all of the rules. I had a campus interview in December that seemed to go well, but, alas, I got no offer out of it. It felt good to practice my job talk, to see what it was like to meet with potential colleagues, and to learn the etiquette of breaking bread with search-committee members....